Authorized inside, legislators separated on the conditions of detainees in “Alligator Alcatraz”

Ochopee, Florida – Democratic legislators have condemned the new Florida Everglades Immigration detention center After visiting Saturday, describing it as crowded, unhealthy and infested with insects. The Republicans of the same tour said that they had not seen anything of this kind in the distant establishment that the officials nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”.

The state -signed tour came after certain Democrats were blocked earlier from visualization the 3,000 bed detention center that the State quickly built On an isolated landing track surrounded by swamps. So many legislators of states and members of the Congress revealed themselves on Saturday that they were divided into several groups.

“There are truly disturbing and vile conditions and this place must be closed,” said journalists, American representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, democrat, after visiting tents, trailers and temporary buildings. “This place is a blow, and they abuse human beings here.”

Cage -style units of 32 men share three combined toilet tank devices, visitors measured the temperature at 83 degrees in an entrance to the housing area and 85 in a medical admission zone, and locusts and other insects abound, they and her Democratic colleagues in Florida.

Although visitors said they were unable to speak with the detainees, representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, also a democrat, said that one called “I am an American citizen!” And others have chanted “Libertad!”, Spanish for “freedom”.

The Senator of State Blaise Inguglia, a Republican from Florida, a lean that he had seen a well -managed and safe installation where the accommodation was clean and that the air conditioning worked well.

“Rhetoric out of Democrats does not correspond to reality,” said Ingoglia, who said he had shot in the same group as Wasserman Schultz. INGOGLIA said that a handful of detainees have become “a little noisy” when visitors appeared, but he did not distinguish what they said.

The senator of the republican state Jay Collins was in another group and said that he also found that the detention center was clean and working well: “No misery”.

Collins said it had seen rescue generators, a monitoring system for food restrictions and military style berths with good mattresses. Sanitation devices struck him as appropriate, so basic.

“Would I like this combination of toilets and headdresses in my house bathroom? Probably not, but it’s a transition detention installation,” said Collins by phone.

Journalists were not authorized by the Tour and the legislators were invited not to bring phones or cameras inside.

Messages requesting comments have been sent to the state emergency management division, which built the installation and representatives of Governor Ron Desantis, a republican. The spokesperson for Desantis, Molly, highlighted one of the optimistic readings of Indoglia on social networks.

Through the state of Tampa, the Federal Secretary for Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, said that “the problems that were there (at the detention center) were resolved”. She added that she had spoken with five republican governors that she did not appoint to model other facilities.

Desantis and his Republican colleagues praised the fortune detention center, built in days, as an effective response and made to the call of President Donald Trump to mass deportations. The first detainees Arrived on July 3After Trump turned and rented the installation.

Described as temporary, it is intended to help the administration of the Republican president to achieve its objective of strengthening the detention capacity of migrants of 41,000 people to at least 100,000. The distant location of the installation of Florida and its name – a nod to the Alcatraz notorious prison This once housed federal detainees in California – aims to highlight a message of deterrent in illegal immigration.

Before the establishment’s opening, state officials said prisoners would have access to medical care, coherent air conditioning, a leisure court, lawyers and members of the clergy.

But detainees and their parents and defenders have told the Associated Press These conditions are horrible, with foods infested with verses, toilets overflowing on the floors, mosquitoes burst around the closed berths and air conditioners which sometimes go out in the oppressive summer heat of the south of Florida. A man told his wife that detainees spent days without having showers.

The spokesperson for the emergency management division Stephanie Hartman qualified these descriptions as “completely false”, saying that prisoners always take three meals a day, unlimited drinking water, showers and other necessities.

“The establishment meets all the required standards and is in good working order,” she said.

Five legislators of the Democratic State tried to visit the site on July 3, but said they were denied access. The state then organized the tour of Saturday.

Legislators have continued in the previous denial, accusing the administration of DESANTIS of hindering their supervisory authority. A spokesperson for Desantis described the “stupid” trial.